We went to the pool all day. It was an L-shaped pool, a swim club in the Baltimore tradition — just a pool, wading pool, basketball courts, ping-pong table, a shuffleboard court. No golf, no tennis.
No one EVER showered before entering pool, despite what the sign said.
In the water, we played: Marco Polo, underwater tag, freeze tag, regular tag. It was a strict place, so no toys were allowed in the pool — no balls, no floatation devices. But it was in the pre-liability era, so there was a high dive. We did cannonballs and pineapples (holding one leg up, while the other was extended.) I learned to dive off the high dive and swan dive, but my attempts at a back flip — ouch!
You could get benched for running. The lifeguards were power-mad.
During Adult Swim, we played: I Doubt It and Hearts and Pitch. We ate: nutty Buddies, frozen Snickers, ice cream sandwiches and Rocket Pops.
There was no better feeling than falling asleep on a chaise toward the end of the afternoon, when your skin was as brown and fragrant as a toasted nut, and the sounds — splashing, yelling — faded into the background, and suddenly your mom was shaking you and it was time to go home.
You put a dry towel over the car seats, even if they were vinyl. Within an hour of eating dinner, exhaustion came on you fast and, despite the summer ban on bedtimes, it was hard to stay awake.
Repeat every day until Labor Day, except for the two weeks at the Delaware beaches.
What was your summer routine?
It was different, depending upon the phases the adults were in. Until I was in 9th grade, I took off my shoes at the end of May, and didn’t put them on again until school started. Hung out with my best friend either in her back yard or at the beach, where we’d swim back and forth across the Snake River. Listened either to our Monkees records, or her brothers’ acid rock: Hendrix, Cream, etc. etc. Eric Clapton and Davy Jones – quite the combo…
After 9th grade, there was a swimming pool, and I spent my summers floating in one of those arm chair things with cup holders. I had piles of magazines and books stationed around the edge of the pool, and a cooler. It was awesome…
That pool memory caught me off guard. I am from a different generation, raised in the South when segregation was king. I remember there was a public pool that many people went to, but I can only remember going maybe once. I am not sure if I actually went except I remember the blue, blue, blue of the water, lots of splashing, a diving board and dark bodies shimmering with water and fun and laughter. Blacks were only allowed to go to the pool at certain times and it was always at night.
My family just sidestepped that whole issue and we would go to the beach (Atlantic Ocean), yes, a black beach where you could park your car on the beach at low tide and move it before high tide. We would go about twice a month and have picnic lunches, no swimming for an hour after we ate. I have pictures of me and my brothers at the beach. We were there always as a family.
We also each got one pair of rubber thongs, cost about 39 cents back then. If you broke your thongs before the summer was over, you were out of luck because only one pair a summer was allowed. We felt sorry for the kid who broke his thong sandals. We spent lots of time outside, watching ants, playing marbles, hopscotch, dodgeball (when we had one), swatting mosquitos late at night on the patio because inside the house was sooooooooo hot. I think AC hadn’t been invented then (just joking I think). We owned one box fan and my parents had control and directed the flow of air into their room.
When we were very little, we had our own inflatable pool that my father would set up in the backyard. He never wanted any other children to play in the pool besides his own so after the first cool dip, we wandered away to be with our friends. Since the pool sat under a large oak tree, no one wanted to clean the leaves (I’m thinking tree trash) out of it.
I learned how to play marbles in the cool dirt of our back yard in the summer and my older brother never let me win, always took my best marbles. Funny how as children you survive that kind of theft, but as adults we are likely to stop speaking to one another if we feel our sibling has our marbles. Ha ha ha. What memories this is bringing back!
As an only child, we would borrow a friend of the family�s daughter my age (Tish) or my cousin Kristin (also my age � owns the Island Grill in San Souci, Harsen�s Island, Michigan & her father, Jim runs the wine shop inside The Wine Merchant if you�re ever in town; tell �em I sent ya) and they would stay over a couple weeks at a time.
I was blessed with a Kayak pool (big rectangular, 4 ft deep w/ blue metal decking all around that would burn your feet if you stood too long in a sunny spot) in the back yard. We would play Marco Polo or have tea parties on the bottom (cross legged w/ sipping hand motions). We would make our hair look like George Washington (but we called it Martha) by standing and dunking our heads of long hair in and folding 1/2 of it over the tops of our heads with our hands. We would rest blow-up rafts on the edge and do summersaults on them into the water. If there were more friends over we would have chicken fights (two kids on top wrestle while on two kids on bottom�s shoulders). If it was just the Tish and I, we would try to wrestle/dunk each other. I always lost because Tish had brothers and I was a weakling. I had fields and then train tracks behind my house and if we heard the train we would climb out of the pool and run all the way to the tracks to see the train. This would become very funny because it was tiring and we would be back only a while before another train would come and then the dialog went something like this:
�Let�s go run to the train.�
�We just went�
�So�
�No, I�m tired�
�C�mon�
�
�Okay�
We would have wasted time while discussing it, so we had to run faster to catch it, laughing harder each time.
We had an orange Coleman� tent that we would keep up in the back yard. Inside we would play: Monopoly, Pay Day, the Holly Hobbie Game, Uno, Clue, the Gnome Game, Whosit, Cat�s Eye, the Mork & Mindy Card Game or Life (there were probably more I can�t remember � but I still remember the alien names from Mork & Mindy).
We never had air conditioning, just big box fans that we liked to talk into. We had a flagstone hearth for the fireplace that was our stage. We would sing or do comedy routines into tinfoil microphones to an audience of no one (or a parent or two occasionally).
We would make cassette tapes of ourselves singing, reciting TV commercial jingles or making inside jokes.
We ate Bomb Pops and Push Ups and regular popsicles and drank green (melon?) Hi-C. We went to Trinity�s penny candy and library (with creepy taxidermy animals) and got Pop Rocks, wax bottles, Bazooka gum, dots on paper (who knows why) and many other treats.
We would make tents indoors with a card table, folding chairs & blankets off the couch with World Book Encyclopedia (Bicentennial Edition) volumes to hold the blankets. We made a spectacular one once and begged to get to spend the night in it. We got to, but I was mad when I woke up to discover that mom had pulled some of the blankets back for fear we would suffocate (?!).
One year we watched the premiere two night airing of �Salem�s Lot�. We were sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor of my room and during the night I had wiggled enough that my head was just under my tall canopy bed. I woke up thinking I was in a coffin and banged my forehead but good.
Okay, I�m gonna stop now and let someone else ramble.
Thanks,
- H.
Every summer, the families in our neighborhood would camp together. The men returned home during the week, while the women and children remained in camp�hiking, swimming, adventuring. When we weren’t sailing, swimming or hiking, we were collecting pop bottles for the deposit money. We’d always take a family camping vacation as well�Yellowstone before it became so very popular, Mesa Verde, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan.
The summer I was ten, we camped at Lake of the Ozarks. There was a three-storey swimming platform that I was determined to swim to. I look at pictures now; I was so very bone-juttingly thin that summer in my black two-piece suit. Dad swam behind me, and I started out strong, but soon reverted to the dog paddle. The platform looked as far away as ever; I kept swimming though my muscles ached and I was starting to panic. I began to think how nice it would be to rest, just to sink under the cool water, to sleep for a bit. Suddenly, I was being pulled up by my britches with the word “SWIM!” shouted loudly in my ear.
I swam.
When my two best friends Bobby and Dave were around, we went down the the community park and climbed the cliffs and pretended we were in the army or were STAR WARS heroes hunting storm troopers. Break for lunch and mooch food off of Dave’s family. Afternoons, we’d play football behind Bobby’s house.
If I was alone, I’d ride my bike out along the train tracks until it was time for Little League/Hotstove.
My summer was exactly the same, only “pineapples” were called “can openers,” and there was Kentucky Fried Chicken. My brother did a full-on bellysmacker from the high dive and physically relives the pain every time the topic comes up.
Over the tinny speakers John Cougar played: “A little ditty, ’bout Jack and Diane…two American kids doin’ the best. they. can…” and other classics like, “naa naa na-na-na-na, angel’s in the centerfold…”
There were mayflies called “fishflies” that came every summer. The cycle every year ranged from a few bugs to so many under the street lights it was wise to increase your stopping distance before the intersection while driving or you could skid right past the stop sign. They smell like fish when there are that many of them.
Bug,
It’s funny, because the music on the speakers spells out our age difference, but everything else is the same — including the tinny speakers.
And Jackie, your gentle reminder about segregation . . . what can one say? May I ask the location of the beach you visited?
Heather — we didn’t have ac either, didn’t need it, really. And Leslie? I’ve never camped in my life. Sad but true.
I wrote about summer because we’re in the grip of what appears to be a week-long heatwave, and I wish I led the kind of life where I could go to the pool every day. (Book due Oct. 1, so this is NOT an option). Yesterday, I was wild to go to the local, public pool, where there was a water ballet. Alas, we didn’t make it.
What memories this has stirred up. Summer just has a feeling doesn’t it? Getting up in the morning and putting on your swim suit even if there were no plans to go, but you had to be prepared. We had a pool at my grandmother’s yard a short bike ride away. It was the above ground kind with the deck around it. The song, “Rock the Boat” always reminds me of getting as many as we could on a raft and rocking it, singing that song until we tipped over. We would swim most of the day, the ice-cream truck melody would signal a break in the playing. A dime was all one needed to get something decent. Then after dinner we’d catch lighting bugs, or play kick the can. We had no AC either–how did we all survive?
I my teen years. I still wore a bathing suit under my clothes mostly every day. But now it wasn’t so much for swimming, it was for sun tanning. Baby-oil glistening on our skin. Sunscreen was not heard of and would have defeated the purpose. My friend Candi and I would listen endlessly to Bruce Springsteen and hope the boys we liked would be riding their dirt bikes past her house on their way to the woods. One day that actually did happen and we rode with them and made out all afternoon. We still call each other on July 23rd–our personal holiday even though those boys are long gone and we’ve both been married (more than once).
Being an adult is hard in the summmer because you long for those carefree days and they just aren’t as numerous as they once were.
Hi Laura, I was just wondering if you happen to remember the Wakefield swimming pool in the Wakefield Apartment complex? I remember spending quite a few summers there as the guest of Alan Dark� the son of WCAO Radio 60 DJ & Baltimore Icon Johnny Dark. That pool was like 2 L shaped swimming pools put back to back� or a Z shape for lack of better words to describe it. I remember that they had a floating bar for a few years and would toss dry ice in the pool to get a Smoke On The Water Effect at nighttime, when it was swimming for Adults only. Lots of Baltimore Colts, Bullets & Orioles lived & swam there during that time. What a GREAT time it was to be a kid in that era and in that great neighborhood! I hope all is well & wonderful in your life. See ya
Very similar to yours, actually. Except what you called a “pineapple” we also called a “can opener.” And the typical card game during adult swim was go-fish.
There were also trips to Jones Beach (in Manhattan?) where we’d get in trouble if we got sand in the car.
We had a pool in the back yard, as did five of our neighbors. There were about 15 of us kids, and each day we took turns going from one pool to the next. Moms didn’t work, if it rained and there was no thunder we threw on bathing suits and ran up and down our dead-end street, jumping in puddles.
Now we belong to a pool club up the street. My daughter’s 9 and she and her friends play Shark and Marco Polo and noodles are allowed in the pool, which is great for us moms who want to float.
Laura, the beach we liked best was American Beach. the one we liked least was Little Talbot Island, both in the Jacksonville, FL area. As I write this, I remember people who didn’t know would always think Jacksonville Beach was the official beach reference, but jax Beach was actually segregated until well into the 1970s. At American Beach, we could jump right out of the car and run straight for the ocean, into the waves, then run back out again trying to outrun a wave. There is a book out there called American Beach by Russ Rymer (or Rhymer, I can’t find my copy) if you want to know more about this historical place which has since been renamed Amelia Island Plantation now that there is a Ritz Carlton and million dollar condos. It has a rich history and now is about to be taken over by the developers who are offering bottom dollar for the land owned by many black families.
You know I can still feel the heat of all those little girl summers.
Amazing. The pool memories are so the same; I really don’t even need to write mine, they’re already here.
But, Pitch? In Baltimore? Please, oh please, how is it played? (A brief, brief description would do.)
Card games were geographical to me when I was a kid. In Baltimore as kids we played fish and then learned to play 500 rummy and cribbage watching the adults. Then I would make the two week summer visit to relatives in Arkansas where I would watch the adults play pinocle and pitch. I truly never heard of Pitch in Baltimore.
Several decades later, I’m just now entering a new card playing phase of my life (also perhaps known as I’m getting old) and had been desperately trying to remember how to play Pitch. I then happened to go to Yellowstone with one of my Arkansas Uncles last month and he retaught me the game but warned me that every little town in Arkansas has its own variation. Indeed, the version that he taught me has no similarity to any that I’ve found in books.
I would love to know how “Baltimore Pitch” is played.
I don’t think I can pull together the rules of pitch. It fell somewhere between Hearts and bridge, with a bidding system, and a trump suit. You won the right to call trump by having the highest bid, but then you had to take that many tricks.
Oh, and I can’t believe I forgot War and Double Solitaire!
Frozen Zero bars can take me back to 12-years-old in no time flat. I still have one every summer just to remind me of how great it was to be a kid in my small town. We played hours and hours and hours of Statue. Still one of the greatest kid games in my mind. And lots of croquet. Jarts, back when they were metal and dangerous. We used to catch nightcrawlers a lot to supplement our income. The trick was to put wax paper over the end of the flashlight, secure it with a rubber band, then pour some mildly soapy water in the yard. That was good for enough money to get all sorts of treats at the pool for 2 or 3 days.
“It fell somewhere between Hearts and bridge, with a bidding system, and a trump suit.”
Many thanks Laura-that’s close enough. Though, do you recall whether or not it was played with partners? (This has been a point of major debate.)
We didn’t have a/c or a town pool. But my sister, the neighbor kids and I were outside all day, every day, just doing things. Then we would come in and Mom would make us wash with yellow Dial soap to ward off poison ivy and if we had gotten into the weeds and bugs and all would dose us with Benedryl which was still prescription. We went camping at the same places every year, with the same people so we could hardly wait to get there and see all of our summer friends again. There was a motel with a pool across the road from our house and when some people with kids bought it, we were thrilled, we could go swimming as long as they weren’t too crowded. We called pineapples “canopeners” too. We used to play I Doubt It, I hadn’t thought about that in years!
Between this post on Summer and the August letter, I am so missing Baltimore!!
oh my this has brought back a flood of memories, I lived as a very young girl on the shores of Lake Ontario and we would swim almost everyday during the summer…the morning glories would be out and perfumed the air which was good as anyone swimming in L.Ontario (Burlington Bay side) can tell you that a multitude of dead fish would cover the beach every morning..we would kick them all aside to make a path to the water…and boy was that water ever cold but laying flat out in the sand warmed us all up again…I went with several friends and we were mostlty the same age..there was never a lifeguard and I don’t ever remember adult supervision even though we mostly all had stay at home moms. A couple of years later the town built a huge outdoor pool and we would be dropped of there after lunch and picked up again by dinner time…legs so tired they quivered and tummies rumbling as our dimes only bought us a bag of popcorn or a chocolate bar..none of us went for popsicles or ice cream as it wasn’t filling enough! What a wonderful memory and I bet no one swims in the lake now and when I tell people that they disbelieve me or ask me if I glow at night, this area is right by Hamilton harbour where all the steel plants pump out their wares and the area is quiet stinky and the air is cloudy for miles on a hot day…but we all have lived to tell the tale. We very often played kick the can all around the neighbourhood just before dusk and I remember climbing neighbourhood fences and using garages and under back porches and no one ever seemed to mind..as everyone knew everyone else. It was a great time for kids to run around free…kids seldom have that kind of unstructured freedom now.
I don’t think Pitch was played with partners, but there may have been a variation in which it was. What I can see, in my mind’s eye, is a friend named Nancy, a swim team member in the team’s orange-and-brown Speedos, squinting at her cards. Oh, and I remember how we pulled out the front panel of our Speedos so they could fill with water. God knows why.
Evenings were lonely, as we were the only kids on the block. The Monaghans (the uber-Baltimoreans whose surname I stole for Tess) went away for the summers. But in the early days, when they were still there, we played a game called German tanks in which we threw ourselves behind bushes and pretended to machine gun cars that came down our street. Again, God knows why.
I have to add Dreamsicles and Slip ‘n Slides to the summer memory pool. And practicing cheerleading routines in front of the plate glass window in the backyard. I was so proud when the builders put in a kidney-shaped pool in-ground pool. I thought the shape was in honor of my doctor-father.
Have to agree about the roller coasters-I used to LOVE them but I went to DisneyWorld last winter for a friend’s 50th (I’m not quite there yet but getting close) and was shocked (and appalled and crushingly disappointed) that the roller coaster type rides made me very queasy. I won’t be doing them anymore. Stilled loved the water/flume rides though.
Sean, I’m embarrased to admit that it was the Trailblazer that signaled to me that rollercoasters and I were kaput. Did you stay at the Hershey Lodge? Did you go for the “sweet start”?
you described my summers for sure. some of my favorite smells to this day are sunblock/chlorine, because I’m instantly transported back to 5th grade and days at the public pool or our little excuse for a backyard pool.
Or even a week at my grandma’s lake, only replace chlorine with the woodsy scent of lake water and sap.
Another of our summer routines was Six Flags Great America. It was only 15 minutes from our house (and now I live across the street). One summer we went 27 times on our season passes. We’d throw on a swimsuit (for the water rides), shorts and a tank, grab our fanny packs (hey it was 1990), load up a cooler with PB&J sandwiches and juice boxes (the park prices are outrageous!) and ride ride ride til Mom said “time”. I remember being a pre-teen and looking at the couples at the park, and dreaming of the day when I’d have a boyfriend that I could wait in line for rides with. Little did I know I’d marry the roller coaster KING and be on my way to yet another coaster park even this coming weekend…
Has anyone else’s stomach aged out of roller coasters? Mine did, but I know someone a mere six months younger who loves them more than ever.
And, strangely, I’m still cool with the water variations, the log flumes and their like. But I did a pretty small roller coaster at Hershey Park last summer and my stomach was NOT pleased.
Hi Laura. I believe you and I are about the same age. I rode the Great Bear at Hershey last year, and it was the first time I’ve ever felt ill during a ride. On the other hand, I had no problem with the Wild Mouse or the Trailblazer (the small coaster). The sharp curves on the top of the Wild Mouse don’t make me ill, but they do get me wondering if my life insurance is paid up. People with high centers of gravity should not get on that ride.
Hi Laura.
We’ve been doing day trips to Hershey from Baltimore. Haven’t had the chance yet to stay at the Lodge. Our last overnight stay in Hershey was at a chain hotel. There was also a junior cheerleading competition occuring at the arena, so overnight there were scores of pre-teen girls running throughout the hotel practicing their cheers.
Have you tried the Tidal Force at Hershey? A great ride for getting soaked.